Nearly three decades after Jimmy Joe Cox was seen arguing with his much-younger, live-in girlfriend outside a Bermuda City bar, a Superior Court judge has ordered Cox to stand trial in her murder and dismemberment.

After a two-day hearing in Barstow Superior Court, Judge R. Glenn Yabuno ruled Friday that sufficient evidence existed to hold the 71-year-old Cox to face murder charges in the December 1982 death of Carole Spearman.

Several law enforcement and civilian witnesses testified during the hearing, which was held 28 years after Spearman’s hand and head washed up along the Colorado River in 1982 and 1983. Her body has never been found.

Cox was arrested in May after prosecutors in the Cold Case Unit re-investigated the case and found new evidence they say points to the defendant. While prosecutors know there was a confrontation between Cox and Spearman, they aren’t completely sure of its subject.

“There was evidence presented at the preliminary hearng about an argument that occurred at the Sundowner bar between the defendant and the victim during the early morning hours of Dec. 22,” Deputy District Attorney John Thomas said, in a brief telephone call.

“We don’t know exactly what it was about,” Thomas said. “It had something to do with a ring.”

Cox is scheduled to return to court Aug. 4 in Barstow to enter a plea on the charges.

Defense lawyers argued that San Bernardino County did not have jurisdiction in the case, since the body parts were found on the Arizona side of the river.

But Thomas explained the state Penal Code gives San Bernardino County jurisdiction because they were found within 500 yards of its jurisdictional line, he said.

Cox’s lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Edward Wilson, could not be reached for comment.